Today's Stichomancy for Jessica Simpson

The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

The Miracle

"Dear brother, dearest friend, when I am dead,
And you shall see no more this face of mine,
Let nothing but red roses be the sign
Of the white life I lost for him," she said;
"No, do not curse him, -- pity him instead;
Forgive him! -- forgive me! . . God's anodyne
For human hate is pity; and the wine
That makes men wise, forgiveness. I have read
Love's message in love's murder, and I die."
And so they laid her just where she would lie, --

The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne:

breaking his silence with a pungent voice.

'Yes,' said Attwater, 'we did.'

'And how did you handle that, sir?' cried the eager captain.

'Well, you see, it was a queer case,' replied Attwater. 'it was
a case that would have puzzled Solomon. Shall I tell it you?
yes?'

The captain rapturously accepted.

'Well,' drawled Attwater, 'here is what it was. I dare say you
know two types of natives, which may be called the obsequious
and the sullen? Well, one had them, the types themselves,
detected in the fact; and one had them together. Obsequiousness

Not since the cashier of The Merchants and Farmers
Bank committed suicide three years past had Oakdale
been so wrought up, and now that historic and classical
event paled into insignificance in the glaring brilliancy
of a series of crimes and mysteries of a single night such
as not even the most sanguine of Oakdale's thrill lovers
could have hoped for.

There was, first, the mysterious disappearance of Abi-
gail Prim, the only daughter of Oakdale's wealthiest cit-
izen; there was the equally mysterious robbery of the
Prim home. Either one of these would have been suffi-